The Cyclonic Dust Separator project proposal won one of the 5 Seed Grants that were awarded this semester! I will start really getting into this project next week, over spring break. Here is the text of the email:

After slaving over the votes and grants, Dr. Forest and I have decided on five
grants for this semester. We favored the grants that contain many or all of the
following characteristics: Emphasizes invention and engineering over art; Supports
interdisciplinary design; Focuses on something new, not just a copy of something
that already exists.
The following five were chosen:
1. Photo Bioreactor - Blacki Milhose
2. Quadrotor - Justin Brotzman
3. Campanile-Climbing Robot - Will Borzon
4. Cyclonic Dust Separator - Sterling Peet
5. Tesla Coil - Chad Ramey
We will have a "Maker's Show and Tell Fair" at the end of the semester, where you'll
be encouraged to show off your creations, along with anyone else who would like to
show off what they made in the Invention Studio this semester.

For those of you who didn’t receive a grant: have no fear! We’ll be doing this again in the future, and we’ll be better at it then too. One of the problems with our first attempt was the generality with which the proposal guidelines were written – we’ll be more specific about what we want next time, and will hopefully have more grants to award as well.